Good Vibrations Magazine

I feel sick. Literally. Having just returned from Venus Berlin I should be blogging about how wonderful the show was – who I met, the amazing conversations I had, the sights I saw and the products I got to bring home… not to mention my interactions coming through customs with said products.

Instead I’m reeling. Will we never learn? Honestly – it’s a valid question and not just political rhetoric.

The second day I was in Berlin I headed to the Holocaust Memorial and walked through the long isles of concrete towers contemplating the intent of the designer and trying to open myself to the impact of the towers, the isles, the light filtering down on the me, the rolling hills, how it felt to have children playing tag and hide-and-go-see. I took photos and I took video attempting to capture the experience. It’s not the first Holocaust Memorial I’ve been to and won’t be the last but is it the most recent. I found it to be really interesting. I actually find any visit to Germany (and Europe really) to be a memorial. Bombed out churches, remnants of architecture now obliterated, landmarks that once held Nazi rallies and streets once covered in glass.

As I moved around the flat I was staying in I was aware of how the floor boards creaked when I moved across the room and my thoughts strayed to my visit to Germany 11 years ago and to Amsterdam where famed Anne Frank lived. The pieces of her wall still preserved under glass so we could see but not touch. How can we touch what happened. What was going through people’s minds… how they were led to follow such a cause… and how they truly believed that what they were doing was the right thing. And if there didn’t – they were too scared to stand up and speak their minds. To be the minority voice.

I found that I thought of the Holocaust walking through the streets, climbing the stairs to my flat, closing the door to the street. No more so than when I was standing in the Memorial wondering if the designer meant for the concrete towers to be reminiscent of the old Jewish cemeteries I visited in Prague with their off-kilter headstones warped by years gone by.

So the issue of history repeating itself. We create memorials and decorate walls with names so we can remember the atrocities of the past and work to never, ever repeat the mistakes that were made. The hope is that by running your fingertips over the names – feeling that each name was a person who was murdered we will learn to accept our differences and move through our fear of the “other”.

Never Again. It’s something community activists, feminists and communities have been asserting for years and now it’s be co-opted by a despicable politicians hoping to attract people who can’t see through the smoke and mirrors. They should be ashamed to use such a powerful phrase and strip it of all meaning.

Clicking through websites this morning I came upon the article below. And I feel sick – it just isn’t right. That’s the bottom line but there’s so much more to it. People are so afraid of the “other” and it’s easier to hate and persecute than acknowledge that we are all fucked up. It’s easier to hate and fear and persecute than to acknowledge that differences are okay. And I’m frustrated because it’s all coming out so pedestrian but it’s so important.
It’s important not only on November 4th but in understanding global struggles in walking down the street and in looking at the systems in place- government, prisons, schools, social services and more. And it’s not just important – it’s crucial.

Read on:

British Chaplain Wants Gays Tattooed with Health Warning

‘Let us make it obligatory for homosexuals to have their backsides tattooed,’ the vicar wrote on his blog.

LONDON – If the chaplain of the London Stock Exchange has his way, gay Brits will be branded outcasts – literally.

Rev. Peter Mullen, an Anglican vicar who serves as rector of St. Michael’s church in Cornhill and St. Sepulchre in London’s financial district, wants all gay men tattooed on their buttocks and chins. According to the vicar, the butt stamp should read “Sodomy can seriously damage your health,” and the chin patch should proclaim “Fellatio kills.”

“It is time that religious believers began to recommend … discouragements of homosexual practices after the style of warnings on cigarette packets,” Mullen, 66, wrote on his blog.

The suggestion evoked comparisons to some freakish combination of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and Adolph Hitler’s management of European Jews.

Understandably, gay rights activists were outraged by Mullen’s outburst and demanded his resignation. It’s not the first time the vicar has spewed anti-gay sentiment, gay rights group Stonewall noted: He also publicly has condemned pride events as “obscene” and posted to his blog a poem slamming the wedding of two gay priests performed in a church by a fellow vicar.

Even the Bishop of London was not amused by Mullen’s most recent stunt, calling the suggestion “highly offensive.”

Lest Mullen be mistaken for a common homophobe, however, The Register pointed out the reverend is equally opposed to secularism (”far worse than the threat from international terrorism,” Mullen wrote in an editorial in the Times) and abortion.

Mullen’s most recent diatribe may come at a higher cost than previous outbursts have carried.

“These comments are now being looked at internally within the Diocese, and he faces disciplinary procedures,” a spokesman for the Diocese of London told The Register.

Mullen stands unrepentant. He called the collection of rants a joke.

“I wrote some satirical things on my blog, and anybody with an ounce of sense of humour or any understanding of the tradition of English satire would immediately assume that they’re light-hearted jokes,” the vicar told The Register. “I certainly have nothing against homosexuals. Many of my dear friends have been and are of that persuasion. What I have got against them is the militant preaching of homosexuality.”